Businesses want to admire the customers they have, and a CRM tool makes the path smoother for your business. But when you have a CRM solution set up and still can’t get the desired results, what can be the reason? Maybe you’re missing something in the procedure while choosing a CRM solution. Or simply, you’re not doing what should be done.

Through this article, we are going to clear out about a CRM checklist and why CRM projects fail in the first place. So that it can help your business to give a better customer experience with the best customer relationship management solution.

Why do CRM projects fail?

A survey of Merkle Group Inc. over 352 USA businesses concludes that 63% of the CRM adoption fails.

This is a CRM failure rate over the last 13 years.

So how can you be sure that your CRM software adoption is going to be successful? Find these selective reasons helpful among tons of CRM failure reasons.

Lack of strategy and vision

Before acquiring a CRM system, you must have a proper strategy for how you are going to implement and use it. Otherwise, the system will be like a stuck boat that will drown. So, define how you’re going to use it and measure the improvement coming out of it.

User adoption

When the CRM software is not built and designed considering the end-users of the software, this might happen. It also happens in CRM training. To avoid this, you need to integrate CRM software perfectly with your existing work process.

Technology needs an effective push

Every software is a system to get done one or some specific tasks. It’s just designed to get input to provide the output. However, it requires systematic input from the people who are managing it with a plan. So never take your CRM system for granted to do the task by itself; rather, put some human effort into getting the best out of it.

Poor planning

The more you put your time into implementation planning, the stronger it gets. CRM implementation is a multi-step process. So focus on each phase and plan it well to reduce CRM failures for your business.

Always remember your end-users

You might think that all the rich features will lead you to success. Or you might think the CRM vendors and coders are the ironies that make the system successful. Guess what? You’re perfectly wrong. The real success relies on your CRM software end-users because they are the people who will be using it daily.

So put them on the ground, involve them in the implementation process, and increase the probability of CRM success.

CRM implementation checklist for your business

No matter the size of the customer, you need to care for them well. Because what your customers say about you is how you treat them. Treating them is not a pretty easy task to get done when your business is growing. The bigger the business gets, the tougher it is to handle all of them.

A CRM solution executed in your business can make the process less of a hurdle. But the process is not as easy as you’re thinking right now. To make it easy and organized, here is a CRM checklist of features for different purposes, including the process.

Define your strategy to best use the CRM system

It’s almost the same thing I discussed earlier in the failure section: you need to know what you are going to do and have a better plan. In this place, you ensure the end-users, know the core purpose and utilization process of CRM and set up the KPIs to measure later. So that the visionless CRM adoption doesn’t mislead you.

Identify your CRM requirements

Based on your needs, identify all the required features and make a feature checklist. In the next part of the article, we’ve discussed the mandatory core features that every business needs and what a perfect CRM solution must have. There are a lot of steps to complete the process, and this is also the most crucial part.

To map out all the requirements, talk to your marketing, sales, and customer support provider teams. Before all these, ask why you need a CRM for your business and see if the goal is synced with others.

Prepare a budget to adopt the system

When you’re done with the CRM requirements, it’s time to fix a budget based on your requirements. Since it’s a big-budget project, there are some issues to consider here. The CRM system has some hidden costs. If you don’t count, then at a glance, the cost will seem cheaper than the effective cost. Those hidden costs are support limitations and ongoing maintenance.

Choose the right CRM

Now choose the method to build the CRM software. If you are planning to make it in-house or by CRM vendors, then it’s great, but it’s an upfront expense and will cost you huge bucks. On the other hand, an open-source platform like WordPress can save you money. So choosing WordPress as an open-source CRM is the best choice for small businesses.

Here’s a list of 7 best WordPress CRM solutions to choose the right one for you.

Data migration

New CRM will help you to get a fresh start by cleaning and importing only the necessary and updated data. For migrating data, have a manager to ensure the data authentication and then prepare a brief of data migration like what data should be migrated and which way, form, etc.

Train up the end-users

When all is done, before going live, train up the ultimate users of your CRM. Give them step-by step instructions, and if required, make detailed documentation. But this part can be deducted if you use an easy-to-use CRM software.

Go live and evaluate the outcome

Gone live? Here comes another part even if you made this far with CRM implementation. Start evaluating based on the KPIs you set earlier and if everything goes right and your team hit the KPIs then great. But if there’s any negative impact then try to find out the problem and improve the software.

To evaluate your CRM solution perfectly follow these criteria. take feedback from the customer support employees and sales representatives. Ask them questions like “how much time does it require to sell a specific unit”, “is the software worth using to understand customers’ need and mitigate them”

Feature checklist

• Third-party integration (especially with ESP – email service provider)
• Strong security system
• Easy communication system with customer
• Reporting
• Automated email campaign
• Lead management
• Email list management
• social media management
• Tracking and scoring leads and deals
• Marketing automation software integration
• Instant online support to customer
• Support automation
• Pipeline management
• Knowing customer or client lifecycle
• planning the workflow, assign an employee to the lead
• Schedule a meeting with clients
• Multi-purpose use like B2B and B2C system
• Easy collaboration
• Social media integration 

What should you consider before purchasing a CRM solution

Customization is the first thing while acquiring CRM software. It will let you make any changes you will be required later. Along with this, easy to adapt, flexibility to use and devices, cost-fitting, support assurance, and the demo version will add extra benefit if your chosen CRM system has it all. 

Recommended CRM solution (effective but cost-friendly) 

If you have a small business, the best suit for your business is a WordPress based self-hosted CRM solution. Wondering why WordPress CRM is the best of a kind?

It’s most popular in the small business industry because it’s cost-effective with almost all the required features, user interface. What more convenient is the system is quite easy to adopt, use and maintain for any kind of user with any coding knowledge. If you are a non-techy person, it’s handy to you too.

Also, a great WordPress CRM solution must have integration with other software and application to make the activities effective.

While considering WordPress for your CRM system, the topic is incomplete if we don’t mention the full-fledged WPERP CRM module. Basically WPERP is a complete ERP system powered by WordPress which includes other functionalities like HRM, Accounting, Project Management, and CRM.

It’s best because you will get a feature-rich CRM solution at a cheaper price and easy-to-use. The plugin comes with more than 10+ powerful extensions like Deals, Email campaign, popular ESP integration, WooCommerce integration, etc.

What WP ERP CRM offers

• Useful for both B2B and B2C Business
• Secures All Your Data in a Single Database
• Easy Maintenance
• Runs Behind Your Own Website
• Easy to Collaborate With Clients and Customer
• Flexible and Customizable

Wrapping it up on CRM checklist

Most business owners can’t value a CRM solution properly and suffers later. Some consider it just a tool. But least who knows the value beyond a system and how to use it properly.

So grab the best feature-rich and cost-friendly CRM solution for your business and let your marketing and sales team grow bigger.

According to the survey, a business needs more than 13 weeks to fix the process and requirements. So, hopefully, this guideline will save you some precious hours like abruptly looking for what to do and serve you in the instance.